


The Interconnectedness of All Things

by AssassinOfRome



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016), Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Apart from Dirk being A Mess, Crying, Dirk Gently Needs a Hug, Eleven Needs a Hug, Like lots of nosebleeds, Multi, Nightmares, Nosebleed, Project Blackwing (Dirk Gently), Project Blackwing is part of the MK Ultra Experiments, Season Two Compliant but not spoilery, Suffering, Test Subject Dirk, Test Subject Eleven
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-02
Updated: 2017-11-02
Packaged: 2019-01-28 14:36:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12608812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AssassinOfRome/pseuds/AssassinOfRome
Summary: “Are you bleeding again?” Dirk jumps about a foot at the question and turns sharply on his heel to glare at Todd. He should look ridiculous, tissues stuffed up each nostril as he frantically wipes the blood from his hands. But Todd sees that his fingers are shaking and he’s blinking hard to push back tears and he doesn’t look ridiculous. He looks scared – more scared than Todd has ever seen him.“It’s only a little one, don’t worry.” Dirk’s grin is so wide that it looks like his face might split in two from the strain. His eyes are wild, and though they are gleaming in the gloom, he looks feverish, not friendly. “Go back to sleep, Todd. I’m fine.”“Bullshit.” Todd stands up and steps forward before Dirk can complain. “You haven’t been fine since you fell out of that truck. You haven’t slept, you’re hardly eating, your moods are all over the place, and these nosebleeds are new too. What part of that is fine?”Whilst sleeping in the cells, Todd quickly learns that Dirk isn't exactly doing so well on the grand cosmic scale of Fine. Meanwhile Dirk battles nosebleeds, insomnia and the search for a lost girl, as if looking for a lost boy isn't already hard enough as it is.





	The Interconnectedness of All Things

Todd stares up at the ceiling and wonders if he’ll ever sleep in a room without bars again.

It’s late, and the room would be drenched in darkness, if it weren’t for the stubborn moon streaming in from the cell window and bouncing off every metal surface and directly into Todd’s eyes. Jealousy burns through his chest as he thinks of Farah, who took up Tina’s offer to sleep outside of a cell with no shortage of unsubtle eyebrow waggling from the cop. Todd isn’t sure if Farah even picked up on the implication – she’d been so strung out looking after him and looking for Dirk that she’s almost permanently distracted from anything that’s not strictly case based. He really shouldn’t resent her the no doubt exceptionally comfortable bed in wherever Tina goes when she’s not working. But he does though. Just a little. His eyes itch and he wishes he could curl up and rest but every time he tries to sleep, Dirk makes some strange noise that jolts him right up again.

In truth, Todd knows he should be thankful that Dirk is even sleeping. The detective had been running on what he’d titled “holistic energy” but what Todd knew was pure adrenaline since he and Farah had sprung him from the trunk, barely stopping for breath, let alone rest, as he threw himself into yet another wacky mishap that had ended up with them arrested and awaiting the judgement of the ridiculously named Sherlock Hobbs. In another life, Todd would have laughed at the absurdness of it all, and brushed it off as the will of the universe, but the way Dirk wriggles in the bunk below him, the strange strings of words filling the cell, has Todd on edge.

Dirk seems to be speaking in cycles, starting off with the odd whimper or whine. Then there’s giggling, high and harsh, before tumbling into what sounds like sobs. Todd had slipped down the ladder and watched him through a whole cycle and he didn’t seem to be in any pain at these moments, though his expression is twisted and wretched. He wanted to reach out and shake Dirk awake, but when he tried, Dirk quietened, then started something new, rambling and babbling in equal measure. He’s at the babbling stage again now, and Todd tries to interrupt.

“Dirk? Dirk! Wake up! You’re dreaming, Dirk. I need you to wake up for me.”  

“Topple… salmon… raindrop… 24,901 miles… no I don’t know it in meters. No stop it that hurts! Let me go let me go!” He makes a strangled cry and then falls silent again. Todd wants to call out, to the Sherriff or Farah or anyone, but then the muttering begins again, this time faster and quieter. He can’t make out any of the words, but now they at least sound like sentences.

"Unde e fata? Ce ai facut cu ea? De ce nu o pot gasi? Ce i-ai facut ei? Lasati-o sa plece, te rog sa o lasati sa plece, sa fac tot ce vrei si sa pleci. nu-i face rău."

Todd tries to hold Dirk down as he switches back to English, writhing in the bed and sweating, his voice one long wail as he begs to the darkness. But he won’t wake, won’t stop fighting against whatever he’s dreaming about, reaching out and moaning.

“Tell me where you are! I can help you, I promise I can help, sweetheart, I just need to know where you are. Please, I won’t hurt you, I won’t hurt you, little girl. I just… don’t go! Please! Don’t leave! Don’t – tell me where you are! Tell me where you are!”

His eyes snap open then, and Todd grabs him by the shoulders but Dirk doesn’t see him, too caught up in his fast-fading dream to recognise him. Yet Dirk’s vacancy doesn’t extend to his strength, as he scrambles out of Todd’s grip and flops onto the floor, scurrying upright and pausing for a second to steady himself, before clapping a hand over his mouth and bolting for the other side of the room, leaving Todd dazed, confused, and ever so slightly sore.

“Tissues, tissues, I need tissues.” Dirk murmurs from beneath his fingers and lurches forward again, fingers scrabbling through the bars as he tried to reach the Kleenex box sitting just out of reach on Tina’s desk. He looks strange and silver in the moonlight, but that doesn’t stop Todd noticing the gush of red blood soaking Dirk’s lips before he clamps a handful of tissues against his nose.

Another nosebleed. His seventh since falling back into Todd’s life. And the worst one yet, from the looks of things.

“Are you bleeding again?” Dirk jumps about a foot at the question and turns sharply on his heel to glare at Todd. He should look ridiculous, tissues stuffed up each nostril as he frantically wipes the blood from his hands. But Todd sees that his fingers are shaking and he’s blinking hard to push back tears and he doesn’t look ridiculous. He looks scared – more scared than Todd has ever seen him.

“It’s only a little one, don’t worry. Must have knocked it when I was sleeping.” Dirk’s grin is so wide that it looks like his face might split in two from the strain. His eyes too are wild, darting about the room as if waiting for something to leap from the shadows, and though they are gleaming in the gloom, he looks feverish, not friendly. “Go back to sleep, Todd. I’m fine.”

“Bullshit.” Todd stands up and steps forward before Dirk can complain. “You haven’t been fine since you fell out of that truck. You haven’t slept, you’ve barely been eating, your moods are all over the place, and these nosebleeds are new too. What part of that is fine?”

Dirk won’t look at him, and pulls out the tissues from his nose, twisting and folding them into various shapes before tearing at them, getting little white debris all over his pyjama bottoms. He doesn’t speak either, lips pressed tight in a thin grim line that makes him look centuries older and beyond tired.

“What happened at Blackwing?” Todd continues, taking a step forward. Dirk flinches, and moves closer to the bars, clinging to them in a way that causes a sharp pang to rip through Todd’s chest, worse than any pararibulitus symptom. “Did they hurt you?”

“A bit.” Dirk mumbles, barely moving his mouth, as if he is physically unable to spill his secrets. He turns from the bars, and slinks back to the bed, flopping down hard. He doesn’t react when Todd slides in next to him. “It wasn’t anything I haven’t had before. Mostly it was tests. I didn’t give them anything they didn’t already know about.”

“Mostly?” Todd wants answers, but Dirk screws his eyes up tight, and it’s obvious he won’t talk about anything approaching that subject tonight. “What kind of tests? Like… like math?”

“Mostly they wanted to reassess my abilities but… there were some workouts too.” He folds his arms tightly over his chest and Todd notices that, despite Dirk’s sharper cheekbones and skinnier waist, there is new definition in his biceps and his shoulders are broader than before. Usually that would cause a more than friendly level of excitement, but it doesn’t feel right. Dirk Gently shouldn’t be ripped. Dirk is silly and soft and sweet. Not… not whatever this is. “I… I can’t stop thinking about them.”

“Is that what you’ve been dreaming about? The tests?” Dirk frowns, and Todd realises he would give anything for Dirk to give him that old scathing smile, rolling his eyes in a “I can’t believe you asked such a stupid question” moment that usually makes his cheeks burn and his stomach curl. But instead Dirk closes off entirely, expression purposefully blank.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You always want to talk about it. You want to talk about everything that everyone has ever done ever.” Todd can hear the desperation creeping into his voice with every word, as he tries to ignore the fact that this is the longest conversation he’s had with Dirk since they reunited. He misses his voice, his rambling randomness and those strange foreign phrases that are so Dirk that hearing a conversation without them is like listening to an orchestra without a conductor.

“Yes, well this is off limits.” Dirk snaps, and wipes his nose, as if brushing away the crusted blood will brush all this unpleasantness back under the carpet, where it can fester and rot. “I simply need to stop dwelling on the matter and look to the present. We’ll solve the case and find the boy and –“

“The boy?”

“Yes? The boy. The Boy. The point of all of this.” Dirk gestures around the room, but it’s not as wild as normal; he doesn’t exuberantly fling his limbs forth, instead keeping them tucked tight against his chest as he waves vaguely.

“In your dream, you were talking about a girl.” He regrets it the second the word tumble from his mouth but by then, it’s too late. The room is silent and still, the only movement coming as Dirk narrows his eyes and growls faintly.

Despite what the FBI and Friedkin had implied, he’d never thought of Dirk as a danger, or a monster, not really. But now he’s not so sure. Dirk is cold and burning hot at the same time, and his voice drips with rage.

“Drop it.” There is no room for witty comebacks, or compromise, or the sway of the universe in those words. “Do not mention her, or this, to anyone. And get off my bed.”

“Dirk I-“

“Get. Off.”

Todd watches for a second, and then, shoulders sinking with hopelessness, he turned and climbs up the ladder, falling back onto his bunk with a defeated thump. He wonders if he should apologise, as he hears Dirk’s sheets ruffle as he curls up tight, but doesn’t know quite what to say.

So he says nothing, and silence fills the room until dawn.

* * *

As the first few trickles of morning light fill the room and the first stirs of fate tug at his lower back, Dirk folds his arms over his eyes and tries to breathe deeply.

He doesn’t want this today; he barely wants to move, let alone traipse around this backend town, no doubt getting himself and his loved ones into yet more trouble.

His loved ones. He dwells on that phrasing, but doesn’t retract it. How could they be anything else, when they had come so far to save him? Not that they had actually helped him escape, but the thought was what counted and they had thought of him so much in the days in which he’d been away.

He’d thought about them too, constantly. In the spinning hours between confusion, electrocution and good old fashioned despair, he’d pictured nothing but Farah’s smile, Amanda’s laugh and Todd’s eyes. Those gorgeous eyes that saw him as more than just an experiment, or an artefact, but as a person, a friend.

Dirk knew wishing for more than that would be both greedy and stupid, and he tried his best to avoid both of those traits. But bloody hell did he crave it.

Not that Todd would be looking at him like that any time soon. Dirk winced into his arm as he remembered his own snappish behaviour during the night, when he’d been so fraught with worry that he’d pushed away the only person who he never wanted to be without. He couldn’t remember why he’d done it.

That was, until Hobbs’ radio crackled into life and he’d pushed his arm so firmly into his face that he was surrounded by darkness. There was a moment where the white noise comforted him, when the darkness soothed him.

And then he was in the strange place again, with water washing over his feet and nothing but darkness for miles.

He wanted to force his eyes open, to return to Todd and apologise for his erratic behaviour, but instead he walks forward, listening carefully for the splashes of his steps. He feels the universe tugging at him. _You’re supposed to be here, Dirk Gently_ , it whispers.

So he’s a little less shocked when he sees the little girl again, curled up and crying with her face buried in her knees. He still can’t get over how quickly her hair has grown since he first encountered her in his dreams – she’s gone from shorn sheep to full lamb in a matter of months. Though he should really stop thinking about animals and focus on comforting her. _Say something, Dirk. Let her know you’re here._

“Hello again.” He mumbles, and she looks up at him with those scared staring eyes. He wondered if he looked like that as a child, after all Blackwing had done. He’d tried to tone down his perpetual look of shock as time passed; he found masking it with a bright smile usually helped. He tried for one now, but couldn’t muster more than a quick grin as he eases himself down beside her. “I’m Dirk Gently, though you already know that, don’t you?”

After months of meeting in this strange shadowy space, she still won’t talk to him until he shows her his mark. With a slight sigh, he tugs up his sleeve and shows her the numbers, painfully prominent against the pale skin of his wrist. She studies them, running her fingers over them and mouthing out the digits.

“Oh-oh-five.”

“Oh-one-one.” He responds as she gives him her wrist and he repeats the gesture with her own tattoo. In a bizarre way, this too is comforting, in the same way that seeing the Rowdy Three or that bizarre stabbing woman makes him feel a little less alone.

But she’s a child, and her presence means Blackwing is carrying on with their barbarity in some godforsaken way, after all this time. And he’s got to stop it, got to help her.

He’s got to find her, universal plans be damned.

“Where are you?” He asks for what feels like the millionth time, but she shakes her curly head and gives him the same hopeless answer she always replied with.

“Lost.”

“Are you hurt? Are you alone?” She shakes her head again to both questions, and Dirk feels the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. That or he’s getting a chill from all this blasted water.

If he’s cold, she must be freezing, so he doesn’t mind when she buries into his chest and starts sobbing into the soft cotton of his sleeping shirt, taking hold of one of his hands and gripping tight.

“Scared.”

“Don’t be scared.” He murmurs as he runs his other hand through her curls. He finds the action comforts him just as much as it does her. “I’m a detective. It’s my job to find lost people. And now I’m back with my team, so I’ll be doubly quick to get you out of whatever pickle you’ve managed to get yourself into.”

“You’re… you’re free?” She asks, red-rimmed eyes wide with surprise as she looks up at him. He nods, and this time his smile comes more easily and lasts longer.

“I’m free. I’m free and I’m coming to find you Oh-One-One. You can count on that. You can always count on Dirk Gently.”

Yet even as he says this, he can feel himself being tugged away from her. The hopelessness creeps back into her eyes and he tries to tell her that he can’t help it, that he’s sorry, but she’s already wailing again, and when he opens his eyes and moves his hand down from his face, the tight press of her little fingers against his is nothing more than a memory.

He doesn’t realise he’s crying until his tears hit the pillow. Judging by the throbbing, he’s fairly sure his nose is bleeding again, and he should really sit up and stem it; it would do no good to stain these sheets, no matter how cheap and scratchy they are. Todd is awake and moving around the cell, restless to start the day. In comparison, Dirk feels ancient and decrepit and can hardly bring himself to move. Yet when he goes to wipe the tears and blood from his face, he catches a glimpse of those awful numbers once more and despite his exhaustion, makes a promise to himself.

Find the boy. Find the girl. Find the answers.

He hopes that, at least, will be enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Congratulations on getting this far - I really don't know how I feel about this fic. I've spent all day on it and... yeah. 
> 
> There might be more of this if people are interested and I actually figure out how to write for these characters. 
> 
> Any and all feedback is appreciated, so feel free to leave some. 
> 
> Have an awesome day! :D


End file.
